Yahoo! Merchant Solutions lets you offer downloadable goods (such as ebooks or software) for sale in your store. Downloable goods is a system for selling computer software items and charging for the download.

Making a downloadable good

To make an item a downloadable good, upload the file to the "Download" field on the item's page (in the Store Editor or Catalog Manager). You will be asked to specify a filename. This should probably have the same suffix as it does on your computer (e.g., "AlienBlaster.zip") -- something appropriate for the target platform and which will allow the browser to take any appropriate post-processing action (like decompressing the file). This will become the default file name when the customer downloads the item.

Ordering a Downloadable Good

If the user has ordered a downloadable item, a "Download" button will be displayed on the Order Confirmation page. Your customer just has to click this button to begin downloading the item.

Alternatively, they can come back to the Order Status page later (even from a different computer) and download the item. Your customers can always get to their Order Status page using the URL from the Order Confirmation email.

Frequently Asked Questions

If you have enabled Risk Tools for your site and you sell downloadable goods, please be aware that Risk Tools will not prevent a person who is committing fraud from downloading the product.

When selling downloadable goods, the buyer sees a link to access the download page on the Order Confirmation page after submitting the order. Risk Tools rules are applied upon order submission but before the merchant fulfills the order in the case of physical goods. With downloadable goods, fulfillment happens immediately (access to the download link) and thus as a merchant you are informed of a potentially fraudulent order only after access to the downloadable good has been granted.

If you're offering free downloadable items, you don't need to follow these instructions. Just upload your file to your File Manager in the Web Hosting portion of your account (or the Files page in the advanced interface of the Store Editor), and create a link to it using HTML or the "New Link" button.

Yes. Our system currently accepts files no larger than 16MB. Depending on your browser, you may not be able to upload files larger than 14 or 15 MB. Remember, very large files may be difficult or impossible for your users to download if they're on a slow internet connection. Try to keep your downloadable files as small as possible by zipping them with a zip file utility such as WinZip or WinRAR.